I attended the Genesys G-Summit in Chicago at the end of January. This is the first in-person conference I’ve attended since the onset of the COVID pandemic and wanted to share my observations and experiences with others who may have missed the event and wanted to get the inside scoop on what is going on at Genesys.
The day started with a welcome and keynote. I always learn something valuable when attending a keynote, and this keynote was no exception. John Clark, Vice President Product Marketing at Genesys, delivered the keynote and focused on the concept of experience orchestration. According to Clark, experience orchestration is the practice of coordinating the technology appropriate to a customer interaction based on the experience you want your customers to have across all channels of engagement. The component of experience orchestration that resonated with me was the importance of a shared knowledge base across channels. Information siloed between channels causes inconsistent communications, so agents are to communicate effectively and efficiently with customers, they need access to the same information a customer can find on the website or used when chatting with a bot.
Ginger Conlon, Customer Experience Advocate at Genesys continued the conversation in a fireside chat that provided insights on how to better engage with customers. This included conversational engagement, responding to new expectations when interacting online, as well as changes in experience evaluation. Ginger shared her perspective on how organizations can strengthen their competitive advantage by transforming customer relationships with experience orchestration. This includes the need to deliver outstanding experiences for employees as well, because customer and employee experiences are intertwined. Her co-presenter was Robin Gareiss, CEO and Principal Analyst at Metrigy, who is a frequent contributor to No Jitter.
The breakout groups were equally as informative and continued to build on Genesys’ experience orchestration capabilities. Ian Felder, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Genesys, demonstrated how Pointillist, an AI-driven customer journey analytics solution, can visualize customer behavior and quantify its impact on KPIs like revenue, churn, customer satisfaction score (CSAT) and net promoter score (NPS, as well as contact center metrics like self-service rate, average handle time (AHT) and first call resolution (FCR).
Felder struck a chord saying to deliver the best customer experience, you really must understand how your customers are engaging over time across all your channels. Pointillist aggregates customer data within and beyond the contact center to visualize end-to-end customer journeys. Customers interact with companies using multiple channels, like web, mobile, agent, chatbot and voicebot – and often on systems from different vendors. Organizations really need to look holistically at the end-to-end journey from their customer’s perspective to uncover points of friction if they aim to improve customer experience.
Gareiss also hosted a dedicated session and shared her expertise on customer experience, digital transformation, and emerging technology trends and issues. The presentation was an overview of customer experience trends; most noteworthy was the data identifying contact centers' operational and technical investment priorities, as those priorities point to how organizations are planning to improve customer experience while also increasing workplace productivity and employee engagement.
Her perspective on Avaya confirmed what I am seeing with some of my Avaya clients staying put to see how the market shakes out. However, there are some concerned about the future of their technology investments and are reevaluating their communication infrastructures to devise a forward-looking solution.
I definitely took advantage of the Innovation Lounge, walking through the exhibits, demonstrations, and partner offerings. Did I mention there was a cocktail involved? It would have been easy to just bug out and get to the train early, but it was time well spent getting more in-depth demos of the Genesys products and asking questions to better understanding the tools and capabilities.
First and foremost, I attended the event as an investment in my own learning and development. It’s challenging to keep abreast of the new features, functions, and offerings of contact center solutions. The good news is I heard more benefit talk than feature speak, which supports my approach to how one assesses and commits to technology. And the user cases were relevant and well defined. All in all, it was a good day and time well spent.
SCTC Perspective is written by members of the Society of Communications Technology Consultants, an international organization of independent information and communications technology professionals serving clients in all business sectors and government worldwide.
